Are asteroids humanity’s ‘greatest challenge’?

by Mariëtte Le Roux

Close encounter: NASA graphic showing asteroid 1998 QE2, which caused a brief scare when it skimmed past Earth in 2013. But one day a space rock is bound to be on target, say worried scientists

Throughout its 4.5-billion-year history, Earth has been repeatedly pummelled by space rocks that have caused anything from an innocuous splash in the ocean to species annihilation.

When the next big impact will be, nobody knows.

But the pressure is on to predict—and intercept—its arrival.

“Sooner or later we will get… a minor or major impact,” Rolf Densing, who heads the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, told AFP ahead of International Asteroid Day on Friday.

It may not happen in our lifetime, he said, but “the risk that Earth will get hit in a devastating event one day is very high.”

For now, there is little we can do.

And yet, the first-ever mission to crash a probe into a small space rock to alter its trajectory suffered a major setback when European ministers declined in December to fund part of the project.

Zardoz might be the only movie that can fairly be compared to D-Day, in that if you haven’t endured it yourself, you really haven’t the slightest notion what it’s like.

Zardoz was released in 1974, the second movie that Sean Connery made after leaving Cubby Broccoli’s Bond franchise for good. According to the movie’s director and writer, John Boorman, Connery badly needed money and agreed to do the movie on that basis. He must’ve been really broke.

The movie is 23rd-century romp in which all of humanity is divided up into the lusty and animalistic “Brutals” and the psychic and ethereal “Eternals” at the “Vortex” who have no need to procreate, while a huge flying stone head distributes armaments across the countryside. Sean Connery plays “Zed,” an “Exterminator” who manages to infiltrate the “Vortex,” where he discombobulates the Eternals’ barren notions of sex and violence—or something. Along the way the huge stone head—“Zardoz” to you—memorably bellows the mottos “The gun is good!” and “The penis is evil!” The movie is heady and trashy in a way that only the cinema of the 1970s could possibly muster.

Red-faced: Officials in trouble after strippers entertain inmates

Managers and lower ranking officials are among 13 people facing possible suspension as the Correctional Services department was on Monday left red-faced by images that surfaced on social media showing scantily clad women in lingerie entertaining prisoners.

“The intention was never to have strippers in the facility‚” Acting National Correctional Services Commissioner James Smalberger told a news briefing.

In their video, Anonymous claimed head of Nasa Science Mission Directorate Professor Thomas Zurbuchen told the meeting: “Our civilisation is on the verge of discovering evidence of alien life in the cosmos.

The Whispered Warnings of Radiohead’s “OK Computer” Have Come True

Though Thom Yorke insists that “OK Computer” was inspired by the dislocation of non-stop travel, it’s now understood as a record about how overreliance on technology can lead to alienation.

I’ve noticed a nugget of embarrassment buried in the recent avalanche of critical reappraisals and retroactive interrogations of Radiohead’s “OK Computer,” a record that was released in 1997 and is celebrating its twentieth anniversary this summer. Critics (and some fans) approached its reappearance with trepidation—as if we were all about to be strong-armed into reckoning with our pretentious and over-serious past selves. As if someone had just slid an unmarked manila envelope under the door, and it contained photographic evidence of that one time we Scotch Taped a poster of Nietzsche to our dorm-room ceiling, with instructions to await further notice. Even Thom Yorke, the band’s singer, has been nearly sheepish when discussing its legacy. “The whole album is really fucking geeky,” he recently told Rolling Stone.

To mark the anniversary, the band has just released “OKNOTOK,” which includes a remastered version of the original album, plus eight B-sides and three previously unreleased tracks: “I Promise,” “Man of War,” and “Lift.” (In addition, a special vinyl edition, available in July, will offer a hardcover art book, a collection of Yorke’s notes, a sketchbook of what the band is calling its “preparatory work,” and a cassette tape containing demos and additional session recordings.) None of the extraneous material is exactly revelatory—live versions of “Lift” and “I Promise” have been drifting about the Internet for years—though it does help complete a portrait of a band bucking against itself, and learning how to express its fear effectively.

Self-described ‘Mad Max’ found with illegal weapons — including sawed off shotgun — in Barstow

A sawed-off shotgun was among the items seized Thursday night, June 22,from Jack Lee Ernest, 39, of Barstow, who fashioned himself after Mad Max. Brass knuckles and two knives were also seized.Courtesy of San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department

BARSTOW >> A Barstow man on a quad claiming to be “Mad Max” was arrested Thursday night after they found a cache of illegal weapons including a sawed-off shotgun, officials said.

Jack Lee Ernest, 39, had several weapons, including brass knuckles, two knives — which deputies say “Ernest had positioned for tactical access” — and the shotgun, according to San Bernardino County sheriff’s Barstow station officials.

Around 11 p.m., Deputy Kenneth Bubier noticed someone riding a quad in the area of Old Highway 58 and Leona Road, according to a news release.

Because of the late hour, Bubier attempted to pull over the rider, later identified as Ernest, officials said.

The Family Tree of Exoplanets Has Just Divided Into Two Branches

By Elizabeth Howell, Seeker

This sketch illustrates a family tree of exoplanets. Planets are born out of swirling disks of gas and dust called protoplanetary disks. The disks give rise to giant planets like Jupiter as well as smaller planets mostly between the sizes of Earth and Neptune. Researchers using data from the W. M. Keck Observatory and NASA’s Kepler mission discovered that the smaller planets can be cleanly divided into two size groups: the rocky Earth-like planets and super-Earths, and the gaseous mini-Neptunes. / Credit: NASA/Kepler/Caltech (T. Pyle)

Scientists have reorganized the exoplanetary tree of life into two distinct branches. Most exoplanets discovered so far are close in size to Earth or either Neptune, according to a new study led by the California Institute of Technology. But astronomers are puzzled as to why there is a gap between these two planetary sizes.

The work, which is based on an analysis of thousands of known exoplanets, shows that planets in our galaxy overwhelmingly fall into two groups. The first includes rocky planets up to 1.75 times the size of Earth, and the second group is made up of gaseous Neptune-like worlds between 2 to 3.5 times the size of Earth. (Neptune, by comparison, is roughly 4 times the size of Earth.)

The work includes data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope, which searches for Earth-like worlds in the habitable zones of their stars, and the W. M. Keck Observatory, which detects planets using the High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer (HIRES) on the Keck I telescope. The researchers attempted to classify these planets similarly to how biologists classify animal species.

Psychopaths drink their coffee black, study finds

If you like your coffee black, you may be someone who prefers strong flavours, takes good care of their health, or just wants to drink their coffee the way it’s supposed to be drunk.

Or, you may be a psychopath.

At least, that’s according to a new study published in the journal Appetite, which found a correlation between a love of black coffee and sadist or psychopathic tendencies.

The research surveyed more than 1,000 adults, asking them to give their food and flavour preferences. The participants then took a series of personality tests assessing antisocial personality traits, such as sadism, narcissism and psychopathy.

The study, carried out by researchers at the University of Innsbruck, found that a preference for bitter flavours was linked to psychopathic behaviour.

The closest association was between bitter foods and “everyday sadism” – that is to say, enjoyment of inflicting moderate levels of pain on others.

House Defense Panel Would Create Space Force

Next stop for the military, outer space? (CQ Roll Call File Photo)

A House Armed Services panel intends to create a new fighting force called Space Corps within the Air Force to improve the U.S. military’s ability to address threats in space, according to a summary of the Strategic Forces panel’s forthcoming fiscal 2018 mark.

“There is bipartisan acknowledgement that the strategic advantages we derive from our national security space systems are eroding,” said a joint statement from Mike D. Rogers of Alabama and Jim Cooper of Tennessee, the panel’s chairman and ranking Democrat, respectively. “We are convinced that the Department of Defense is unable to take the measures necessary to address these challenges effectively and decisively, or even recognize the nature and scale of its problems. Thus, Congress has to step in.”

The Space Corps, they added, would be “a separate military service responsible for national security space programs for which the Air Force is today responsible.”

The panel intends to mark up its portion of the sweeping defense policy measure on Thursday.

Its mark also would establish U.S. Space Command as a four-star position under U.S. Strategic Command.

Coffee under threat

Will it taste worse as the planet warms?

Coffee drinkers could face poorer-tasting, higher-priced brews, as a warming climate causes the amount of land suitable for coffee production to shrink, say scientists from London’s Kew Gardens.

Coffee production in Ethiopia, the birthplace of the high quality Arabica coffee bean and Africa’s largest exporter, could be in serious jeopardy over the next century unless action is taken, according to a report, published in Nature Plants today.

“In Ethiopia and all over the world really, if we do nothing there will be less coffee, it will probably taste worse and will cost more,” Dr Aaron Davis, coffee researcher at Kew and one of the report’s authors, told the BBC.

Charming Pornographic Photographs of French Prostitutes from the 1930s

I talked to collector Alexandre Dupouy about a cache of pictures donated by an anonymous photographer.

This article originally appeared on VICE France. Note: This article contains images with full-frontal nudity.

Alexandre Dupouy is a sex archaeologist. The French collector has spent his entire life collecting what he defines as “erotic and pornographic junk.” His shop, the Tears of Eros—now open only by appointment—has been selling pictures, paintings, and sex objects for almost half a century. It’s a sort of small museum that traces the history of sex in France.

In 1975, he received a call from a bookseller friend who said that he had an old gentleman with “something special to show him.” What he had was a luxury car with a trunk full of black-and-white photographs of naked and smiling prostitutes from the 1930s. He explained that he took most of the pictures in a brothel on the Rue Pigalle. Given that he could feel his days were numbered, the old man agreed to part with the pictures as long as he could remain anonymous. That man became known as “Monsieur X.”

Nearly four decades later, Dupouy has decided to reprint some of this impressive collection as a book called Bad Girls (La Manufacture Books, 2014). The book is co-authored by both Dupouy and Monsieur X. Given that the actual photographer is no longer alive, I decided to have a word with Depouy about the book.

Vintage typewriters gain fans amid ‘digital burnout’

In this April 23, 2017 photo, vintage typewriters are on display at a “type-in” in Albuquerque, N.M. “Type-ins” are social gatherings in public places where typewriter fans test different vintage machines. The vintage typewriter is making a comeback with a new generation of fans gravitating to machines that once gathered dust in attics and basements across the country. (AP Photo/Russell Contreras)

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Typewriter enthusiasts gather at an Albuquerque restaurant to experiment with vintage Smith Coronas. Fans in Boston kneel in a city square and type stories about their lives during a pro-immigration demonstration. A documentary on typewriters featuring Tom Hanks and musician John Mayer is set for release this summer.

In the age of smartphones, social media and hacking fears, vintage typewriters that once gathered dust in attics and basements are attracting a new generation of fans across the U.S.

From public “type-ins” at bars to street poets selling personalized, typewritten poems on the spot, typewriters have emerged as popular items with aficionados hunting for them in thrift stores, online auction sites and antique shops. Some buy antique Underwoods to add to a growing collection. Others search for a midcentury Royal Quiet De Luxe — like a model author Ernest Hemingway used — to work on that simmering novel.

The rescued machines often need servicing, leading fans to seek out the few remaining typewriter repair shops.

“I haven’t seen business like this in years,” said John Lewis, a typewriter repairman who has operated out of his Albuquerque shop for four decades. “There’s definitely a new interest, and it’s keeping me very busy.”

News Corp. CEO: The Almighty Algorithm – “fake news” and other consequences of Google, Amazon and Facebook’s relentless focus on quantity over quality

By Robert Thomson

Editor’s note: These remarks were delivered by the chief executive officer of News Corporation, Robert Thomson, during London Tech Week on June 14, 2017.

We are here to pay homage to the almighty algorithm. Algorithmic alchemy is redefining our commercial and social experiences, turning base matter into noble metals. But like the alchemists of old, algorithms are also a charlatan’s charter, allowing claims of pure science when human intervention is clearly doctoring results to suit either commercial imperatives or political agendas.

And there is the enduring contradiction between the claimed sophistication of, say, Google’s ability to target audiences and track tastes for advertisers, and its inability to identify the tasteless, the terroristic, the perverted and the pirated. As the over-alliterative title to this short address suggests, it is profit before provenance and probity. And for journalists, it is penury.

This séance with science is particularly poignant during one of our periodic phases of fascination with AI, artificial intelligence. When is artificial intelligence merely the artifice of intelligence? The most telling recent sign of cerebral superiority was Google’s machine-minded triumph in the board game Go over a Chinese grand master. Chinese call the game weiqi, Japanese call it Go. And so we should turn to the sage Japanese author, Yasunari Kawabata, who presciently wrote The Master of Go sixty-six years ago. He wrote, ”From the Way of Go, the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled…One conducted the battle only to win, and there was no margin for remembering the dignity and the fragrance of Go as an art.”

After seven years of studying the movements and behaviours of female elk, University of Alberta researchers discovered they become “virtually bulletproof” as they age.

“Elk learn to become shy as they get older,” said University of Alberta biologist Mark Boyce. “They hunker down in the deep forest and stay in rugged terrain. Those types of behaviours were very effective (for survival) in heavily hunted areas.”

Boyce and two former post-doctoral fellows used radio collars fitted with GPS technology to track elk in southwestern Alberta and southeastern British Columbia between 2007 and 2012.

In their study, published Wednesday, they found female elk learned behaviours that helped them better avoid hunters with each hunting season.

“The bold elk move the most, are the most aggressive and will bolt out into the open. Those elk died at a high rate.” said Boyce. “As they age, they tend to become shy, more savvy, learn to avoid roads.”

While some elk started out shy, most learned to adopt the shy behaviours.

“The magic number is 10,” said Boyce. “After this age threshold, female elk become almost bulletproof, virtually invulnerable to hunting.”

JAGUAR IS HIRING GAMERS TO MAKE THE CARS OF THE FUTURE. APPLY WITHIN.

Solve this puzzle. Get fast-tracked. Prosper.

BY SHARI GAB

Getting a job has come a long way since the days of plastic Help Wanted signs hanging in the window.

For their part, Jaguar is keeping up with the times and the changing global culture as we become an even more connected, digitized civilization: The company just announced an intiative to recruit 5,000 new hires from electronics experts to engineers, and since they are targeting the most tech-savvy candidates, the application involves completing several puzzles and games to enter into the running.

To apply: Download their app (of course), study and solve the skill-testing puzzles, including building a rendering of their upcoming I-PACE concept. If you’re an ace, they’ll call you in. That part’s not so different from traditional job hunting.

Birds use cigarette butts for chemical warfare against ticks

By Natasha Khaleeq

Is this a cigarette habit with some benefits? A species of urban bird seems to harness the toxic chemicals in cigarette butts in its fight against nest parasites – although there is a downside to the practice.

To firm up the conclusion, Macías Garcia and his team experimented with 32 house finch nests. One day after the eggs in the nest had hatched, the researchers removed the natural nest lining and replaced it with artificial felt, to remove any parasites that might have moved in during brooding. They then added live ticks to 10 of the nests, dead ticks to another 10 and left 12 free of ticks.

They found that the adult finches were significantly more likely to add cigarette butt fibres to the nest if it contained ticks. What’s more, the weight of cigarette butt material added to nests containing live ticks was, on average, 40 per cent greater than the weight of cigarette butt material added to nests containing dead ticks.

When a Hialeah security guard apparently decided to give himself a promotion to police officer, he landed on the wrong side of the bars.

The security guard, Milton Morales-Perez, flashed a badge while trying to pull over a woman talking on the phone who just happened to be a spokeswoman for the Miami Police Department, and was driving an unmarked car and wearing a uniform, according to his arrest affidavit, reports The Miami Herald.

After backup arrived on the scene, the security guard stated he tried to make a traffic stop because it’s dangerous use a phone while driving, records show.

He makes a compelling argument. The Huangjuewan opened last month on the outskirts of Chongqing, a sprawling city in southwest China. The highest of the interchange’s five levels soars 12 stories overhead, and the 20 lanes send cars this way and that. Getting the best view required standing on the roof of a building perched on a nearby hill.